Red Robichaux’s Bum Steer by Daniel Fitzpatrick

Janelle Moats takes an interest in a fellow student at her music class, rough-around-the-edges Red Robichaux.

Image generated with OpenAIJanelle Moats boarded the Broad Street bus as the first drops of condensation fell from the air conditioning units in the second story windows of the houses behind her. It was March, and windy, and the clatter of the droplets on the palmetto fronds below could not be heard, but as Janelle glanced back, waiting on the bottom step as the two old men ahead of her paid their fare, and saw the droplets glittering, refractory and prismatic, each in its own irrepeatable life, their flat rhythm formed the center of her consciousness.

How we doin, Miss Moats, said the driver, palm up, fingers held loose, slightly spread.

I’m doin good, thank you, Mr. Ernest, said Janelle as she laid a quarter in the waiting palm. Her jaws were heavy, muscular, so that when she spoke her voice came forth for all its pleasant flavor like light trying one last time to escape a black hole.

That’s good, baby, that’s good. Hey Mick, he said, turning to the man who had settled into the seat just behind him, whadaya doin?

Mick looked up in the act of crossing his legs and folding his newspaper, first at Ernest and then at Janelle, smiling from between two billows of brown hair.

Oh now I’m sorry, Miss Moats, where has my mind gone, he said, uncrossing his legs, doubling up his paper in his left hand and rising with the aid of his right. He hunched a little as he made for a seat at the back, though the ceiling of the bus rose well above him.

Janelle took her place, a little warm now, and absently turned the pages of the red cloth bound book which till then had been lodged firmly between her left arm and the soft effluence of her blue cardigan. By the time she’d reached the Nashville stop, flaming with azaleas, she’d decided that Red Robichaux’s look hadn’t meant anything after all. By the time she’d switched to the streetcar at Canal, she’d figured that in fact it had. Uncertainty vanished when she entered the small classroom looking over the lawn toward Holy Name and saw, framed in a window, with the bell tower rising as if out of his head, Red himself, smiling in the shade of his own face. Janelle paused in the doorway, imbibing that backlit grin, and her right hand came away from her book and flicked on a light switch. A flake of red cloth clung to the ivory panel momentarily and then scudded to the floor as she crossed the room to the open seat between Red and the window and sat down, back straight, arms folded over her book again. Red’s left arm lay along the top of her seat, not touching her back but there, massive and radiant with being and intention. His head had turned in time to her progress and his yellow-lashed eyes licked the side of her face. She stared at the book but could feel those lashes brushing the long jut of her jaw.

Whatcha say, Moatsy?

She turned her head away, to the window, and she could feel the pale stubble of his mustache on the back of her neck.

Whatcha reading?

Still gazing at the bell tower and the high dark many-faceted panes of stained glass, she set the book on the table before them. Lazily his hand rose and slid it away.

Ibe-son, he said.

Ibsen, she said.

She any good?

He. Mr. James Joyce thought so. He thought enough of him that by the time he was sixteen he taught himself enough Swedish to write him a letter.

Well ain’t Mr. James Joyce something.

She turned. Her eyes were a centimeter too close together but she accounted for it by never looking straight at anyone. I admire him but I don’t like him, she said.

What’s not to like, he said.

He was a coward, she said.

Least you like me, he said.

Who says?

Can’t say you don’t admire me at least.

What’s there to admire?

Janelle’s gaze had come slowly around, like a door swinging with the swell of a ship, out to the window and back again, and now as Mrs. Eilonwie Gazelle entered with briefcase in hand Janelle’s attention lighted on her.

Ol Miss Eye Lun Why, Red said, glancing up at the brown-haired woman with hands pattering like mice over the latches of her briefcase. He looked back at Janelle.

Don’t know it’d be much to you, he said, but at least there’s that beauty down there. Can’t hold that against me. He nudged his chin toward the window. A horseshoe drive bent around the lawn between the arts building and the church, and on the near side, beached across three slim parking spaces, glittered a long, blue, big-finned Cadillac convertible.

What’d you do, she said, knock over the aquarium?

His arm left the back of her chair. She turned, a little too quickly, and he laughed. If you ain’t the prickliest.

Mrs. Gazelle was occupied with copying brief musical phrases onto the board.

You look so nice today, Mrs. G, said Red.

She stopped writing, peered over her lowered left shoulder, and said, slightly flushed, Thank you, Mr. Robichaux, that will do. The chalk rasped again, and Red’s face went down into his palms atop the table and his back shook with laughter. Janelle raised her right foot and brought a blunt heel down on Red’s toes. The spasms stopped, and the head rose, and the eyes locked upon hers as from the barely moving mouth came in a hiss, Don’t. You. Ever.

She did not look away, and after a moment he smiled and stretched his foot out and around in small circles and said, What’d I say? The prickliest.

Mrs. Gazelle turned and, taking a telescoping silver rod from her briefcase, extending it, and tapping just above the first of her notations, said, Ok, now, who can tell me what note this is?

Glancing at the pointer’s tip, Janelle heard a C come shining and somber from a French horn and with its sound illuminating her consciousness she turned and let her eyes slide along the ichthyan contours of the car three stories below. Across the lawn the church bell struck the quarter hour and dispelled the singular music in her mind.

Mrs. Gazelle was humming a C note, Hmm, hmm, hmm. Anyone? Suh, she hummed, Suhhhh.

Caaaaat, sang Red. The class obliged him.

Ceee, she sang. Good, and… She tapped the next note, a step up.

Jesus H. Christ, said Red as she began to hum again.

Thought this was what you wanted, said Janelle. Easy A.

Easy A, not kindey-garden. Thought I’d learn to play a little better.

You don’t play.

Hm. Thought they’d least let me try.

What’s the point? And anyway, go on and try one, what’s stopping you?

What, are you sitting on a trumpet or something?

In the music room, ya mook.

It’s locked, Prickles.

Not during the week it’s not.

That right?

Sure, I come in at night sometimes and practice.

Huh.

Mrs. Gazelle had stopped humming and, pointer at a stiff diagonal across her voluminous bust, stood glaring at the two of them.

D for dog, said Red.

She continued to stare, and the pointer rose and tapped against her upper left arm.

Ah-woooo! Red howled in long falsetto D, a hair flat.

Gazelle raised the pointer high and whipped it across the desk. Out! Out, Mr. Robichaux, out! The pointer stayed down, and the face was red, and the rush of breath in her nose flushed a crust of snot to the rim of her right nostril and back again out of sight as Red rose, tipped his head to the class, and said, Y’all be good now. Somebody be sure and get good notes for me, and was gone.

Mrs. Gazelle remained fixed in place, trembling as though trying to raise the pointer again. Lifting it at last, she said, Filthy toad, and brought it down hard once more. It was bent in two places now, and its gesture to an A note looked like a witch’s finger indicating a new mole in the face of a mirror.

Red emerged below, and the Cadillac drifted back like a grouper easing off a reef, and Red raised a flourishing valediction as he passed beneath the windows of the church and out onto St. Charles Avenue.

Janelle was almost running by the time she reached the door of the music room that night. The frosted doors flew open before her, and fluorescent light flooded the room, and her breath slowly leveled as she walked around surveying the instruments, hands on her hips, elbows cocked back. Everything was in its place. Nothing had happened. She sat and played idly for ten minutes, hardly aware of the notes that bubbled into space at the blast of her breath. If nothing had happened then maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe Red wasn’t that bad.

By the fourth night she’d quit worrying. The lights would come on, and the room would be undisturbed and she’d practice alone and go home alone and go to class again in the morning and hope Red would return.

The next morning Red still wasn’t back. As she walked into the room overlooking the lawn Janelle was dimly aware of a twittering among the other members of the class. Vaguely she gathered an impression of them leaning toward each other, craning, cupping hands to ears. She was waiting at the window for a first glimpse of the long blue fins sailing up out of the oaken gloom.

More arresting than the chatter from behind was the silent attention occasioned by Mrs. Gazelle’s entrance, which itself, Janelle noted, was uncharacteristically high-headed and crisp, as though she had won an enormous bet and were basking not so much in the glitter of her winnings as in the dismayed pallor of her foes. She laid her briefcase down as usual and languorously popped its locks and raised a new pointer which she did not extend. She crossed her arms and the rod ran up her left arm, terminating a few inches above the shoulder so that when she spoke it was as though she were an outlandish radio now tuned to the right frequency.

Well, she said.

The floorboards groaned as she shifted her weight right and left and back to center.

Well, she said, a reckoning at last.

Janelle glanced over her shoulder. No eye met her own.

I’ve been telling them for years now. Lock the room, I’d say. Lock the room. There’s an awful lot of money laying around in there, lot of days and nights and weekends, not to mention weeks and years of blisters and sore cheeks and cramps. Oh no, they said. Gotta leave the music room unlocked. Some of the students can’t just take their instruments home every night, and they gotta practice, too. Well, let’s see what they say now. Let’s see em all practice.

She turned and began her chalk notations. The twittering resumed, and Janelle thought of Red and then of her father and, while the broad back was turned, she rose and made for the door.

See what they say now, huh, came Gazelle’s voice after her into the hall and echoed in her mind, See what they say see what they say see now see now now see see?

Mr. Terrebonne was in the music room, seated atop the Steinway, his hunched back to the door. He did not turn as Janelle entered or as she opened the cabinet below the window where her alto and her tenor sax had sat these eighteen months and her heart thudded as she saw the two cases still there though she knew they would be empty and felt the emptiness as she touched the top case but opened each anyway and met the emptiness face to face.

Oh, Janelle, I oughta have listened.

Not your fault, she said, still looking at the case, knees folded, seated on her feet.

Shoulda given you a key, he said. Shoulda trusted you a little more.

You never know with people.

That’s true, he said. That’s true.

What are we gonna do about the showcase, she said.

I know, he said. I know.

Does the department have any old spares laying around?

Anything we get gets donated.

Can we reschedule?

Too soon for the caterers and all. No, we’ll just have to see about getting new instruments.

I don’t, she said. I don’t know… There any chance I could use yours, Mr. Terrebonne?

Well, he said, at last turning his gaze from the window to see her over the jagged ridge of his nose, I don’t know that that would be the most proper thing. Surely if you ask your father. His gaze reverted to the outdoors.

He, she said, he…I suppose I’ll have to ask.

Yes, he said. I’m sorry.

It’s not your fault.

She rose, leaving the two cases on the floor, one still open, and walked out of the room and down the hall and the stair to the lawn and on down St. Charles, with now and then a streetcar clanging by. She felt the peering of the passing faces but did not return their wonder, was not aware of them as people at all but only as features of a swirling landscape whose single salient breathing, eating, willing feature was her father at work in the machine shop on Decatur.

Agee Moats was known to every man, woman, dog, and child resident in and around the French Quarter as a good for a drink, grab-assin, ear-scratching terror and had made similar impressions on no small number of the city’s visitors over the decade since the Second World War. He was, that is, a terrible man, though highly likeable, and he was especially liked by and especially a scoundrel to his wife and daughters, whose residence he had not shared in several years and whose company he eschewed as much as possible, which generally amounted to all the time.

His official income was modest but he had amassed a substantial fortune, a fact which made no particular difference in the quality of his own life and only served to add a veneer of indignity to his wife’s penurious establishment.

He did not like music, but his mistress of six years, Elsa Beskowitz, who enjoyed the luxury of his wealth in a sumptuous suite of rooms overlooking Royal Street, and who, hearing of Janelle’s talent, had induced him to take her to a small show at the Hotel Monteleone, had likewise incited Agee to fund the acquisition of two new saxophones on Janelle’s matriculation at Loyola on a music scholarship.

Agee’s favors were like lightning, though, and it was perhaps for the weight of futility that Janelle persisted, alone and on foot, all the way to Decatur, hardly aware of the oak trees, of the oil and tobacco mansions. Disheveled and pale even through the flush of prevenient defeat, she stepped through the open door of the ship. It was near closing, and the shopfront was empty, but the ceiling was creaking as if with several large men shifting in seats above, and Janelle made her way up a likewise creaky flight of wooden stairs, turned the handle of the first and only door on her right, and heard her father say:

Don’t sweat it, Nucci, that’s why they got social security.

The door swung noiselessly away from her and halted within an inch of a mirror in a black frame and the conversation quieted as the men looked up except for her father who thumbed his winnings as the other eyes indulged themselves or tried to before looking back to their hands and the chips on the table.

Y’all clear out now, said Agee.

Well ain’t that something, said a man in a red shirt spotted down the front where the sweat of his beer had dripped as it did now while he took a long drink and sucked at the last of the foam flowing down the dark neck.

You want something just say the word, Nucci.

Nucci set the bottle down and said, Ain’t neither of us that lucky today, Age. He rose, and the other three followed like a sequence of notes in an overture, and they filed past Janelle, not looking at her. She had become for them a ghost, inexplicable and best, for safety’s sake, ignored.

Her father rose as well and, still not looking at her, gathered up bottles and plates and cards and removed them to the trash can and the sink and the drawer and said, Well, Nelly, what’s your mother want?

Nothing, she said. She remained in the doorway, eyeing herself sideways in the mirror, noting the web of light in the hair that had frizzed on either side of her face and the dark spots of damp at her temples.

Nothing, he said, rinsing a plate. He had a white towel over his shoulder and a sponge in his right hand, and the water descended from the faucet through a band of sunlight. The stream was filled with bubbles illuminated as they fell to shatter on the plate. I know ya ain’t down here for ya health. His back was straight, his shoulders back, and his neck bent sharply toward the dish and the bar of light that fell on his white shirt.

She stepped into the room and shut the door, turning the knob and releasing it gently into the latch and looking once more into the mirror, squarely now, before saying, My saxes got stolen. She could feel the blank face of the door behind her pressing against her back, though it was several feet behind her now.

Somebody break in the house?

No. They were at school. All the instruments got stolen.

They keep it locked up pretty good over there?

No, they left it unlocked…so some of us could come practice in the evenings.

His head nodded rapidly, not rising all the way to level, still facing down into the sink where the sponge swirled on the whiteness of the plates and the suds gathered and vanished like the world’s masterpieces coming to be and passing away, age by age.

So what then, he said.

Well, I…

Well, you, he said, his shoulders rising, his right hand coming up to whip the towel free and dry a plate and whipping the towel into place again.

Well you what, he said. He shut the water off and flung the droplets from his hands and gripped the towel and turned toward her now, wiping the water away like some vile substance he’d set his hands into in the dark. Well you what? You want some money? You want daddy come get you a new sax? Can’t be bothered bringing stuff home in the evening, looking after things?

At last he looked her in the face and it was his wife’s face and he hated it.

What, he said and whipped the face with the towel. What? He whipped it the other way. She stepped back and raised her hands and he whipped again, harder so that his hand crashed through hers and he shoved her against the door and whipped the face again and trumpets were blaring in her ears as she sank to the floor and he whipped the face three times, harder each time until she collapsed on her side with her hands over her face but the face was all he could see now as the towel came down again, again, and the hand fell, too, and the shoe thudded against her side once and then his step moved away and ice clinked and popped as liquid licked over it and rattled as the drink was raised. Leather squeaked. Blood thundered. All sound gave a dying fall.

For four cloudless days Janelle lay in her room, and the sun streamed through the blinds and slit the bruises down her arms. When she got up to use the bathroom down the hall, she did not look in the mirror. In the evenings, in the interval between jobs, her mother served her Campbell’s soup with a slice of white bread, leaving the bowl on the table with the bread balanced on the rim of the bowl so that the inmost crust sagged into the broth and slowly sucked it and grew sodden.

Mrs. Evelyn Moats had been on her way home from the evening Mass at St. Theresa’s, where she worked as a secretary, when, still about a block away, she’d seen the silver Lincoln pull up to the curb, and Janelle stumble out to lean against the railing of the stair, and the car pull past her with her husband leaning up over the wheel with his big teeth shining and his big hand raised in a motionless wave. Janelle had been silent, and Mrs. Moats had returned her silence and set out the soup and continued to leave for the parish in the morning and the several houses she cleaned in the evening.

On the fourth day the bruises had begun to recede like floods leaving the land, and when Janelle awoke from a nap around three o’clock to the sound of the phone ringing, she almost forgot herself and rose and answered it. Then she swung her legs off the bed and her ribs ached and she sat still as her sister’s step joined the clangor in the hall and then the high voice said, Hello, and yes, and may I ask who’s calling, and just a moment and then the face had appeared in the doorway, with the neck curved back and the back bent and the receiver pressed to the breast, Janie, it’s that Mr. Terrebonne for you. Janelle sat on the edge of the bed, aware for a moment only of the pain that swelled at each breath and then, gradually, of Liza’s widening eyes and importunate, Janie, Janie, and the deepening impress of the receiver at her breast as though it were some mechanistic parasite intent on devouring her.

She got up. With short breaths she reached the telephone and said, as though she had been expecting him, Yes, Mr. Terrebonne? Yes, yes, I’ll be there. I’ve been a bit ill but I’ve been practicing. No need to worry about me. Yes, yes, he helped me out. Thank you, Mr. Terrebonne. I’ll see you tomorrow evening.

What are you, Liza began. But Janelle had trained a black eye on her, and, half-mesmerized by its florid depth, Liza stepped back and turned away and went upstairs, where the floorboards sounded her retreat to the attic corner where she read and peered through a small round slatted vent onto Broad Street. When the creaking stopped, Janelle returned to bed, where she remained until the following day about noon.

When she arose, Janelle slid into a black dress that hurt her sides, put on a pair of triangular shades her mother always left on the buffet in the hall, and walked down to the bus stop. It was Saturday, and Ernest was off, fishing, she knew, in Lake Pontchartrain, and the driver took her fare in silence and she walked to the second to last row and sat on the aisle. She leaned slightly toward the center of the bus and stared straight ahead, and when people boarded and disembarked they merely passed through the beam of her gaze the way a deer leaps through a headlight.

She was not sure what she would do when the streetcar brought her to the end of the last leg of her brief journey and she stood empty handed before the steps of the auditorium. She could only dream that there, where musicians and audience were meant that evening to converge, some stroke of many-veined providence would supply a small miracle. Mr. Terrebonne would relent. Lucy Spinx would have fallen ill and sent her tenor sax on alone. Some patron of the arts, having heard of their misfortune, would bestow an arsenal of instruments upon the department.

When at last she stood between the auditorium and the park, with beyond the park the River washing all the continent’s disease toward the sea, all she found was Red Robichaux, in the Cadillac, with the top down, leaning at his ease with an arm draped dandily along the top of the seat, where a grey suit jacket lay folded. Gold cuff links burned in the sun.

Whatcha say, Moatsy?

She said nothing but walked around the long pelagic hood and opened the passenger door and seated herself, smoothing the dress along her thighs, tugging gently at the hem of the skirt as she lifted her bottom off the warm leather. The world drifted a little before her and she shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the rest and felt the tips of his fingers against her shoulder.

Ya hungry?

Yes.

The car nosed out onto the Avenue and back the way Janelle had come. People waved at Red and people called hello and people looked admiringly at the car and perhaps admiringly at her and for the most part she merely looked at the windscreen. Her gaze drifted down to her feet. She bent forward and stretched and picked up a clarinet reed and looked over at Red.

You play, she said.

Well yeah, a little bit, not like I’m in Gazelle’s class for the view.

The car floated to the curb in front of Crescent City Steakhouse and Red said, Hope ya like meat, and opened her door and gave her his arm and a little man with a mustache like mirrored check marks showed them to a table and a very large man with a face like Caligula and a belly like Thomas Aquinas brought two glasses of water and Red spoke and the man returned shortly with two glasses of Scotch and Red spoke again and the large man laughed and Janelle took a sip and stopped herself from coughing and sipped again.

What’s your hurry, he said.

Just thirsty.

Me, too, he said as he drained his glass and touched a napkin to his lips and let out a long pursed breath that washed over her as she took another sip. Another glass came, and Red addressed it more slowly and asked her where she lived.

Just up the road, she said, jerking her head over her left shoulder.

Never been here though.

No, she said.

What’s your daddy do?

Anything sits still long enough, she said.

He laughed. His teeth were very white and his hair was very yellow and he looked to her like an egg atop a grey suit.

The kitchen doors open and the sizzle of butter and beef fat pierced the dining room and the steaks and the twice-baked potatoes were before them now and Janelle felt the aches and the hunger leaving her as the flesh and the whiskey mingled and there were none but good sentiments in her mind concerning Red Robichaux and she wondered how there could ever have been the least shadow of mistrust between them and it must have been that her father was right about her after all because the mistrust she saw had all been on her side and she put her napkin to her lips and then for a moment to her eyes but all that was past now, her father and the mistrust and now things could begin again for her.

She knew they had been talking but could hardly recall what had been said except that it was pleasant. Then he was pulling her chair out for her and offering her arm and the large man and the small were bowing slightly to her as Broad Street spread out once again and she resumed the world.

Would that be alright? he was saying.

I’m sorry.

Nothing to be sorry for. Would it be alright if we visit my house for a bit? I’ve got some friends coming by. Real solid type guys.

Of course, she said. Of course. He handed her into the car and she rested against its upholstered curves as against the belly of a fish and the city washed around her as they cruised back to St. Charles Avenue.

Red Robichaux was the sixth of that surname to occupy the stately, white-columned, amply-porched edifice overlooking a gentle bend in the streetcar line between Nashville and Broadway. His forebears had traded artfully in cotton and tobacco and now oil, and as his father was still youngish and spry and was as fond of work as he was of breathing, there was every reason to believe that Red, even should he fail of that prudence which often manages to force itself upon even the most intrepid souls, should never want for the peaks of New Orleans society. He was slated that year for King of Carnival, and the sobriquet Red had fallen upon him long ago for its consonance with Rex.

Red coasted past the carriage house and over the expansive cobbles to glide in between a white Corvette and a red Buick, with other beauties sparkling in disorderly array across the drive beneath the spreading, well-tended oaks. The scene swirled for a moment before Janelle’s eyes as the engine died, and she remembered her parents taking her to the Gulf as a little girl, remembered playing in the break and suck of the waves so long that that night as she lay in bed she still felt their surge and withdrawal, surge and withdrawal, so keenly that around midnight she threw up in the bathtub of the condo.

The door opened beside her and she looked up into Red’s face with the sun behind it high over the peaks of the house. His hand was extended, and his eyes roamed the driveway, taking account of the comers.

Ya alright? he said.

Sure, she said, taking his hand and holding her skirt down across her thighs with her other and stepping with great deliberation onto the stones.

Let’s come around back, he said, leading her to the right of the house onto a path of irregular limestone slabs through a minuscule wilderness of azalea, palm, and rain tree. It was cooler in the bosk and the sounds of the Avenue were muted and, pausing to raise her right foot to adjust her shoe at the heel, Janelle turned back to Red and kissed him on the mouth and tasted the whiskey all over and was fine.

A shout rose to her right. Red looked at her a moment longer and then turned his eyes toward the clearing of the back yard and the freer air and the one who had raised the jubilant cry and Janelle’s eyes followed shortly thereafter. Come on and meet Chino, said Red, and she followed with her hand in his and Chino, standing in the light beyond two leaning crape myrtles, beckoned and whooped and said, We’s getting worried about ya, Reddy, musta been some kinda lunch.

For a moment Janelle could feel his gaze and then she was drifting again with the whiskey and the steak and the fresh venture of the sun in that space between the white brick addition at the rear of the home and the oak trees that stood against the brick wall marking the limit of Red’s majesty. Faces passed before her, all dark-haired and dark-eyed, announced as Mal and Graff and Rich, who all with Chino whooped and wondered about the lunch and passed their expert eyes up and down Janelle’s black-clad form. A cold silver cup was in her hand and she tasted mint and whiskey again and crunched the minute spheres of ice that rushed onto her tongue as she drank thirsting. Words swirled around her and were gone before she could gather their sense. She wondered if she was…what was it? What was…

Come on, Red was saying, come on inside.

What?

Come on inside. Better cool off a little.

He started to walk, and her hand rose and started away from her and she followed up three jagged limestone steps onto a red brick patio and at last through a door which opened before her and shut behind her by means she didn’t catch, and still she moved on through regions of white furniture awash in strange sound.

What’s that? she said.

Come on and see, he said, and a broad sweeping staircase passed on their right and three heads of African antelope and the full yellow body of a crocodile and the sound grew louder and the waves of the Gulf were back again and she was so thirsty, yes, just so thirsty.

The house ran on and on beside her, and the sound grew and hardened and Red was so far away at the other end of her arm. Red, she kept saying, Red, Red, Red, and as she filled her lungs to shout she had to stop they halted and she caught herself against the back of a white wing-backed chair and there in a score of white folding chairs sat more of Red’s hosts blowing into flutes and saxophones and trumpets. On a chair at the front of the ensemble stood a clarinet, and Red said, Scuse me, darling, approached the chair, and, bowing deeply to the band and likewise to the friends who had followed him from the garden, he lifted the clarinet to his lips and added his own evil string of notes to the general debauchery. Then he turned gravely and beckoned for silence and turned once more to say, Friends, lovelies, you do me great honor, you give me great pleasure. I love you all. Most especially I love our new friend, Janelle. Look upon her, gentlemen, applaud her, there you are, that’s right. We would hardly be here without her, and we dedicate to her this solemn number.

Chino, Rich, and Mal whistled. Graff cried, Give it to em, Red. And Red turned to face the band, dropped his pants, put the clarinet to his hole, and loosed a fart which set a snare drum five feet to his right rattling. Another followed, and another, just managing to make themselves known above the din of laughter crashing wave on wave across the room.

Janelle no longer heard. She was looking at two young men in the third row behind Red’s hunched baboon form. In their hands, clutched to their chests in their spasms of mirth, were her saxophones.

Red’s solo continued, and Janelle came around the back of the white chair against which she’d stood. Laughter crested as she made her way across the floor, slowly at first, then at a trot, and finally with all the speed she could summon as she put a palm to the bell of the clarinet and rammed it home. Jubilation reigned a moment longer as Red crashed into the three players nearest him. Then it died as a high animal shriek filled the room and Red kicked wildly and grasped ineffectually at his black and silver encumbrance. Janelle turned away from him as he lay on his side, propped on one arm, tears cascading through the trim yellow moustache. She vomited on a white rug. Her last recorded impression was of a voice screaming You, you, you, and of a faint relieved curiosity as to who You could be.

When her father picked her up from the Broad Street lockup the next morning, he said nothing to her but simply walked with an arm around her shoulders down the long green halls and out into the unstinting sunshine, saying to everyone he passed, Hey, you ever met my daughter? I ever introduce you to my daughter before?

She slept in the passenger seat of the Lincoln, and he did not disturb her, though now and then his hand, resting on her shoulder, gave a little squeeze. They passed the Broad Street bus stop, just as the driver stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked up and down it and stood for several seconds with his cap in one hand while the other ran through his grey hair.